FAT CAT BBC director general Mark Thompson and his executive directors are pocketing cash from a “secret pension pot” while asking staff to accept cuts in their own retirement packages.

BBC director general Mark Thompson and his executive directors have a “secret pension pot” []

A multi-million-pound “pension slush fund” allows Thompson and eight
executive board members the cash but the rest of the workers are
excluded.

The revelation will infuriate the BBC’s 19,000 staff asked by Thompson this week to accept a one per cent cap on their much smaller pensions.

Staff are to be balloted for industrial action over the cap and there is a real prospect of strike action.

The BBC said the changes were essential to tackle the ballooning ­deficit in the pension scheme, now estimated at £2billion, compared with £470million two years ago.

Now the Sunday Express can expose how the board receives top-ups to get round the caps for the rest of the staff.

It is well known Thompson earns £831,000 but what was not known until today is that £163,000 is a pension perk listed in accounts as “other remuneration”. In addition to the executive board 30 other senior executives receive the “other remuneration”.

The top-up was introduced after a Government-imposed pensions cap in 1989. While other companies opted out of the cap in 2005 the BBC introduced a variety of top-up options for staff earning above the current £123,600 cap.

Last night union officials, senior broadcasters and politicians accused the BBC of operating one rule for the elite and another for everyone else. “It is a secret pension slush fund for the BBC’s most highly paid executives,” said Gerry Morrissey, general secretary of media union Bectu.

“At a time when people are being told ‘your pension is being reduced’ it is clearly not acceptable for executive managers to be given a top-up on their salary which they can then spend on private pensions.”

Tory MP Philip Davies, a member of the culture, media and sport select committee, said: “There should be no way there is a pension cap and then a bonus scheme for the top earners.”

David Elstein, former chief executive of Channel 5, added: “Top management was always compensated for not being able to take full ­advantage of the pension provisions, usually through bonus payments.

“The latest proposal to reduce the employer contribution to a deemed one per cent, irrespective of actual payment, is a massive alteration seemingly designed to induce people to leave the final salary scheme.

“All the long-serving senior management figures will be unaffected, with pension pots of over £3.5million for the longest serving, which have been inflated by rampant salary increases and the super-generous employer contribution scheme.”

Former MP Ann Widdecombe added: “If there is a pension cap there should not be a get-out for high earners.”

Staff recruited before May 31, 1989, are not subject to the £123,600 limit. So deputy director general Mark Byford’s £475,000 salary is expected to give him a £400,000 pension, one of the biggest in the public sector.

Thompson, who left the BBC in 2002 to head Channel 4 before rejoining in 2004, heads the top-up league table on £163,000.

Culture secretary Jeremy Hunt has said that the BBC has been responsible for “extraordinary and outrageous” waste in recent years and must change “huge numbers” of things.

A BBC spokesman said: “Under the current proposals, future salary rises for pension purposes for every individual, including executive board members, will be capped at a ­maximum increase of one per cent a year.”